


Tell Me That You’re Still Mine (Tell Me That We’ll Be Just Fine)

by catlike



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Gotham (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, bat still loves cat and vice versa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-13
Updated: 2019-11-13
Packaged: 2021-01-30 07:49:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21424732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catlike/pseuds/catlike
Summary: Bruce leaves a present for Selina on the edge of her rooftop.Set after the Gotham finale.
Relationships: Selina Kyle/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 4
Kudos: 92





	Tell Me That You’re Still Mine (Tell Me That We’ll Be Just Fine)

After his decade-long disappearing act, Bruce Wayne has been back in Gotham for three-and-a-half weeks. Since he’s come back, he’s said exactly five sentences to Selina, and has watched her from a distance four times.

Not that Selina’s keeping track.

Or, more like it’s not that Selina’s consciously _trying_ to keep track, she just somehow _knows_, like the back of her unconscious mind is keeping tabs on this boy from her past without her permission. Bruce has kept his distance, and said nothing to her - not since that night he returned - but he’s been out on patrol every night without fail, and Selina can tell when he happens to spot her. It’s not that she hears him, exactly - he’s gotten quite good at moving quietly - but she can sense him.

She always can.

Which is why tonight, when she’s at one of her old squats to check on the stray cats that have taken it over, she suddenly stops and says, “This makes the fifth time.”

She’s not sure what gave him away, whether it was a shadow that wasn’t quite right or a near-silent footstep, but a familiar feeling washes over her, and she pauses in the middle of refilling one of the food bowls to glance out the broken window pane, out at the night sky framed by jagged glass.

There’s a blanket of stars spread out across the sky and the moon is full and sending a soft white glow into the abandoned apartment, and while there’s no silhouette in her line of sight and not a soul to be seen against the city skyline, she knows what it feels like to have his eyes on her, and she knows even without seeing him that he’s there. He must have chosen her neighborhood to patrol tonight, she realizes.

“You’d think he’d have something better to do than check up on me,” Selina tells the cats in the apartment. “But apparently not.”

Not that she thinks he’s checking in on her, specifically. It’s just that their nightly paths usually end up crossing by happenstance. Still, the word _stalker_ is right there on the tip of her tongue, but before she can say it, she remembers being thirteen and climbing over Wayne Manor’s gate and slipping in through the window like she was coming in with the breeze. She hadn’t even met Bruce at that point, not officially. He hadn’t known she was there then, and he’ll never know now, but still, she can’t really say it without sounding hypocritical, so _stalker_ fades from her lips, unsaid. She debates about saying something else, shouting something that’ll irritate him out into the night, but then decides against it. Ignoring him is a good option, she decides, she doesn’t have the time to deal with drama from Bruce. Or, as everyone’s taken to calling him now, _Batman_.

“It’s a stupid name,” she informs a black cat at her feet, who blinks its green eyes slowly, as if it’s agreeing with her. “And an even stupider costume.”

Insulting Bruce comes naturally, and it’s much easier than admitting that she still thinks about the night he came back, thinks about how he left her up on the roof before he could hear her reply, her words spoken out into the night and hanging in the air with no one there to hear them.

Maybe this is all they are and all they’ll ever be, she thinks. An unfinished symphony, a long list of almosts, a story without a proper ending.

It’s as she’s thinking this that three cats stop eating to twitch their ears forward, and in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, a shadow crosses in front of the moon. Anyone else might have thought they imagined the brief flicker of light, or dismissed the soft noise as the night breeze, but Selina knows better. She knows how Bruce moves. You don’t spend five years with someone - be that close to someone - and not know how they move.

Which is why she knows enough to turn to the cats and announce, “Coast is clear, he’s gone.”

He must’ve seen enough to know she wasn’t committing any crimes, or maybe someone else out there was committing a crime and he left to stop them. It _is_ Gotham City, after all.

Selina leans down one last time to pet the black cat winding its way around her legs, and then she climbs out the window, onto the rusting, rickety fire escape, and makes her way up to the roof.

That’s when she hears the music.

There’s a melody floating toward her on the night breeze, and for a second she’s confused until she looks to her left:

Right there, on the edge of the roof, is a snow globe.

It’s small and bright and glowing against the darkness, like someone’s taken one of the stars down from the sky and pinned it to her rooftop. Bruce must’ve left it for her, and wound it up before he did so she’d hear the music. There’s really no other explanation for it, though she doesn’t know why he would.  
There’s something about the song the snow globe is playing that tells her that she should know it, that there’s a memory with it filed somewhere in the back of her mind, but she pushes the nagging thought away and rolls her eyes.

“Gift repeater,” she mutters under her breath. He’d already given her a snow globe before, and they both know how well that turned out.

She should really smash this one too, she thinks, as she approaches it. If she drops the snow globe now, while she’s way up here above the rest of the world, it’ll make a fantastic crash. She can almost envision it now: the broken pile of glitter and glass, the chime of clinking shards echoing off the cement.

Just another broken thing, nothing new for Gotham. Or her.

It’s not like Bruce means anything to her now, anyway, right? Their story’s over. It ended ten years ago at an airport, when he left her behind with nothing but a letter in her hand and a thousand thoughts screaming in her mind. 

Selina leans down toward the snow globe, and when she does, she feels velvet-soft fur against her arm, and she looks over to see that the black cat’s followed her up to the roof and has come to inspect the globe, it’s pink nose twitching curiously and it’s whiskers brushing against the base.

“Don’t get attached to this thing, I’m not keeping it,” Selina announces as the cat starts to purr. “Our story’s over. _We’re_ over. He knows that.”

The cat looks doubtfully up at her, like it doesn’t believe her even for a minute, but Selina gently nudges the cat aside and picks up the snow globe anyway. It’s still playing music, and she still can’t quite place the song, but it doesn’t matter. The song will stop the moment it hits the pavement. She curls her fingers around the base, feeling the weight of it in her hands, and she reaches her arms out over the edge of the roof, over the hundred foot drop into the darkness below, ready to let go. 

_That’s_ when she recognizes the song.

It’s the song that Bruce played on an old gramophone, that time he’d told her they were going scavenging and then took her on a date instead. It was the last date they would go on, though neither of them had known it would be at the time. The memory of it doesn’t come back to her slowly in bits and pieces, it comes all at once, like a sky that’s started pouring down rain: Bruce saying _trust me_. Bruce pulling out her chair. Bruce somehow getting crystal goblets and candelabras. Gotham in ruins around them, and Bruce creating some sort of sanctuary for _her._

That was ten years ago, why does she remember that?

Why does _he_ remember that?

For some reason, the thought that he remembers makes her fingers curl around the snow globe just a fraction tighter.

For some reason, she finds that she can’t let go.

Instead, she feels herself stepping away from the edge, away from the darkness down below, and pulling her arms in, drawing the snow globe close to her chest. 

“Sentimental idiot,” she says, and the cat looks up at her with judging green eyes.

“Him,” she clarifies. “Not me.”

The cat looks unsure of that, but Selina turns her attention back to the snow globe, and, without really thinking, she shakes it. The snow swirls inside the glass, soft and sparkling, with flecks of silvery white catching the light from the moon overhead, and when she carefully glides the pad of her finger over the curve of the glass, she finds that she’s smiling.

“Okay,” Selina says, and she can’t help the hope that creeps into her voice when she says that one, simple word. She tells herself that it’s ridiculous and illogical, but still, it’s there, and she feels a sudden burst of happiness somewhere in her chest when she says, “Guess our story’s not over yet, Bruce.”

**Author's Note:**

> The song referenced here is the song that Bruce plays on his date with Selina in the episode The Trial of Jim Gordon, which is a real song called Cherry Blossom Moon, played by the Rob Parton Orchestra. This fic was originally posted on my tumblr (selinaakyle) for the prompt request Batcat + Moon.


End file.
